Moot Worship

After spending a little time in the area with Big Ben we strolled back in the direction of our hotel, with a quick stop for ice cream along the way. We continued past our hotel heading towards St. Mary Woolnoth Church where we hoped to catch a Moot worship service. We arrived just in time for the beginning of the service, and were welcomed by the friendly group (which was not too large, perhaps about 20 people).

The Moot worship had visual elements in it, lots of silent spaces, some creative presentations of the scripture readings, and an interesting way to do intercessory prayer. Before I knew it the service was over, and folks were putting the audio visual gear away. Many folks came up and chatted with us, and we were invited to a local pub, which is a traditional thing this faith community does after the worship.

On the wall in the church was a plaque for John Newton (the writer of Amazing Grace) since this was the church he served for over 20 years at the end of his ministry. St. Mary Woolnoth is also another Christopher Wren designed church, and we were told by one of the members of the Moot community that he apparently used some of the dimensions from Solomon’s Temple in his design. It wasn’t a large church, but it was very tall. St. Mary Woolnoth is in the very heart of Old London, and is currently surrounded by the Banking Area of the city. In this way Moot is a bit like a prophetic presence, as one of their central concerns is justice and peace, not profit and power.

The Moot Community is hoping to establish a new monastic community, and have been working with the Church of England authorities to get this established, but so far have not had much success. They are an interesting group of younger people, with a commitment to the Gospel that is deep, and yet they function in a very accepting and non-judgmental manner. It was a good experience worshipping with them - completely different from what we experienced in the morning at Canterbury Cathedral, but inspiring in its own way.

After the service we walked over London Bridge to get to the pub where we had interesting conversations with a number of people from the Moot community. I particularly had an deep conversation with a young Irish man, who is seeking to find his place in the world (and the church). Eventually the sky grew dim and folks started leaving, so Beth and I bid farewell and walked back to our hotel.

Our hotel room is quite simply the nicest room we have stayed in yet (and will likely ever stay in our this trip). We found out when we booked in that we had been bumped up to a higher level room (I’m not sure why, but these Air Miles have gone a long way in this case!)